NHM: Old General Herbarium Entrance

This isn't perfectly symmetrical (there is an arch at the right hand side, and a balcony at the left), yet I still find it a satisfying view. This is the entrance to the Old General Herbarium from the stairs that lead up to the Giant Sequoia in the central hall of that Nat. Hist. I took it standing at the bottom left most part of this photo, looking to the left.

I've blipped the Old General Herbarium ("Old Gen. Herb.") before (1, 2, and my 3rd ever blip, "3"): it is the herbarium whose cabinets now stand empty since their contents have been moved into the Darwin Centre's stacks and storage. It is now a "ghost herbarium" and only acts as storage for the backlog of unprocessed specimens, and various other things that don't yet have a home.

*Rant alert* I have to admit that while I love snow, I've only felt irritated by it today: people left work after lunch on account of the snow (I'm all for not living at work, but how does an inch of snow in central London mean it is time to go home?), and my tube journey back this evening featured "minor delays" (I stood on a terrifyingly crowded platform -I was squashed into standing well over the yellow line, inches from the moving trains- at Stockwell for more than 20 minutes and 5 fully packed trains before finally boarding) on account of the "adverse weather conditions". How can the snow so dramatically affect the southern end of the Northern Line which is entirely underground but for a short section at Morden? Even overground, the trains aren't made of paper?! Hum, I think that Britain's issue with snow is a self-fulfilling prophesy: in places like London (where there wasn't that much snow even in "the sticks") it seems to me that snow simply gives people an excuse not to go to work or behave normally, so then things tend to stop working properly. If everyone just carried on as usual then I don't think it'd cause nearly the issues that it perpetually does. I can quite believe that my views are biased by an unpleasant journey home, but it does seem to me that other countries carry on quite happily when there is snow much deeper and heavier that that which we experienced today. Grrr.